If quiet is an essential component for you in your home should you install hardwood or carpet flooring in your remodel or your new home? Both can provide an excellent environment for your living spaces. However, if you have children or pets and/or are bothered by noise you’ll likely want to consider carpeting over hardwood. The biggest reason is soundproofing.

Where noise through the floor or ceiling is a problem, carpeting along with good underlay padding can solve two problems at one time: reducing sound transmission floor to floor and airborne noise.

For years, carpet has been the preferred flooring to compress unwelcome noise in the home. Carpet and pad provide better sound insulation over hardwood flooring and thus diminishing noise from loud children, clattering dishes, clomping boots, Television, blaring music, barking dogs or other household racket.

Talk with a flooring specialist at one of our Giant Carpet One Floor & Home locations for more information on your choices for reducing the noise in your home.

When you choose a colorful blouse or skirt but later decide it doesn’t really work you return it for another. That doesn’t work as easily when you’re choosing your carpet color to go into the living areas of your home.

Today’s carpet comes in many diverse colors and patterns to satisfy a myriad of personal choices. You may want the carpet color you choose to blend in with furniture and fabrics. You may decide to make a statement about your style by making it a vibrant focal point of the room by choosing a contrasting color. On the other hand, you may want it to match the walls to blend into the background.Many Carpet Colors

Carpet helps to create a home’s atmosphere. It can unite your decorative elements and can make a room look spacious. If you want it to match the furniture, draperies or painted walls, choose a carpet with a similar hue. Environmental colors like stony neutrals, deep greens, rosy quartz and blues are popular.

Darker colors in a room provide coziness while lighter colors make a room seem larger. Cool greens and blues have a soothing effect and warm colors can have a warming effect in a room that lacks light.

Practical considerations like new stain and soil-resistant yarns make today’s lighter colors easier to clean. The darker colors and textures are good at hiding dirt in highly trafficked areas.

Finally, know that the color you choose will change under different lighting conditions. So, you may consider a carpet sample that you can view in your home by daylight and at night by artificial light.

Most bathroom floors take a beating. Bathroom floors deal with everything from constant moisture, wet towels and hairspray to overflowing tubs, toilets and sinks. Bathrooms are wet, wet, wet!

A number of considerations such as traffic, children, pets and visitors should come into play when choosing the right bathroom flooring.

Unyielding to water and moisture, stone flooring is considered by some to be the ideal bathroom flooring. That’s why so many hotels have marble bathrooms. However, stone is cold, especially in the winter, and can become slippery when wet. To counteract these drawbacks, radiant heat and area rugs help considerably with stone flooring.

Ceramic tile is also a great choice. Ceramic tile flooring resists moisture, is low in maintenance and very durable. Still, tile floors can be slippery and cold. Radiant heat can add warmth here and some ceramic tile textured surfaces provide a range of slip resistance.

A lower cost alternative for the bathroom floor is vinyl. It’s easy to install, comes in many different patterns, but is less durable than tile or stone.

Surprisingly, a number of people choose carpeting for the bathroom floor because it’s much warmer. However, most carpet is susceptible to water, moisture, mold and mildew and doesn’t protect the sub-flooring under it. These same reservations can be applied to hardwood flooring, though durable, in moist or wet conditions it can be severely damaged.

Although laminate flooring is easy to maintain and durable it also doesn’t mix well with water and is not recommended for the bathroom area.

If you’re considering new flooring for the bathroom or any other room in your house, come into one of our locations and talk with a Giant Carpet One flooring specialist. We can answer your questions and help you select the perfect flooring for you.

Dirt, dust and other grime wear down all kinds of flooring. Shoes worn outside pick up various elements that stick to the shoes themselves or in the crevices of the shoes and can wear down carpeting and mar other types of flooring. Sharp edges on heels or shoes can also catch, snag, scratch and pit flooring.

Most carpeting today is soft and susceptible to absorbing dirt and other grunge that is tracked onto it from the outside. If not removed it can be ground into the carpet and stain it as constant traffic presses it into the fibers.

Though tile and stone are usually resistant to grime and dirt, the grout between the tiles is like a magnet pulling it in. This same dust and grime can form an abrasive layer on hardwood, laminate and vinyl flooring that can scratch and dull these floors. Winter weather, snow, rain, mud and water are another major enemy to almost every flooring surface.

Though it may not be typical to remove your shoes when entering your own home, or as a guest in another's home, by removing your shoes you can make the flooring last longer.